


Taking Home the Campus

by gala_apples



Category: Macdonald Hall - Gordon Korman
Genre: Anxiety, Bruno has a bad home life, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Future Tense, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 21:35:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13039890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: Bruno is taking the thought of graduation hard. What he doesn’t know is how good the future will be.





	Taking Home the Campus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [remrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/remrose/gifts).



It’s a little bittersweet, walking into Dorm 3 for senior year. This is the last time he’ll walk down these halls with two armfuls of belongings, hands sweaty from holding onto the handles of his suitcases the entire bus ride so a sudden speedbump wouldn’t send all his shit flying. This is going to be a year of last times, and Bruno can only hope something mental will happen, so all his best friends can start a campaign to fight it. Give him another Ms. Peabody to emotionally manipulate into marriage. Give him some financial strain that they have to raise money to fix. Give him another well-meaning ex-professional sports player to pretend to please. Bruno will take anything as a means of distraction.

He’s the first in 306. He can tell by the lack of decor. It’s weird that Boots isn’t here yet; usually the O’Neals drive up early morning. Maybe they’re hanging out in Dorm 1, with Edward, or playing a game of manly pool together before leaving their sons for four months. Whatever the reason, it’s apparently up to Bruno to start making this room their home for another year.

The black plastic garbage bag is the first on his list. Bruno untwists the tie and shakes out half a dozen posters, as well as a few packs of Sticky Tack. It takes a bit of graceful chair climbing, but he gets all of his art up without more than a dozen curses said. There are spaces strategically left blank, too. If Boots brings eight posters, Bruno would bet his poker money for the month that he knows the contents of at least five. Boots knows what he likes, and sticks to those preferences.

Once all the white-painted cinderblock is covered, Bruno moves on to the next thing. Making the beds is a fairly simple task: he just pulls two fitted sheets from his bag and wrestles with the corners until the cotton is flat on the mattress. Boots won’t care that it’s Bruno’s sheets on both, not when they make a habit of squeezing into one twin bed together five nights out of seven.

He doesn’t want to do everything without Boots, so after tossing some of his hygiene stuff in the bathroom, Bruno sits on the bed that faces the open door. He can happily watch his friends, acquaintances and the new kids filter in over the course of the day. It’s like watching a preview of all the conversations he’s going to   
have in the next ten months, all the fun he’s going to have. And all the people he’s going to leave in June, but he’s trying to not think about that.

*

Bruno will buy a house with Boots. While they wait to close, they’ll spend hours at Home Depot and Lowe’s and Sherwin Williams browsing through paint swatches. Every room will be painted a different colour. Neither of them will put up with seven rooms of eggshell white; it’ll be more a matter of which of three hundred shades of purple should the kitchen be. Once it’s all dry, a few art pieces will go up. Their tastes will have changed a bit through university, different bands and different brands becoming the stars of their day, and they’ll be able to afford elaborate frames for their posters, but Elmer’s fish painting will still be one of the featured pieces.

The first real renovation project will be to lay carpets. They’ll have the kind of relationship that will make them completely unconcerned about spills and stains, no parents to scold or administration to owe fees to. Fluffy warm carpets will be in every room except for the bathroom, which will have a hand-felted floor mat Boots buys at a craft sale. 

As they settle in, their address will get out. Each morning, they’ll wake to another UPS delivery person ringing their doorbell. The box Bruno or Boots will sign for will always be from a different friend. The boxes won’t always have a return address, but it’ll be obvious who would want them to have a jar of gourmet olallieberry jam, and who can afford to send a hundred-inch smart TV preloaded with all the Jordie Jones movies. They’ll scatter the goodwill around the house, and even if they rarely see the faces again, only every ten years for reunion events at Macdonald Hall, they’ll know they have friends for life.

*

As far as Bruno is concerned, the only thing worse than summer vacation is winter vacation. Sure, the time issue skews to winter, a whole miserable nine weeks compared to a mere two weeks. The difference is how that time is spent. 

In the summer, Bruno can slip away much more frequently. There's the library for internet use. There's fast food places when he's hungry. Ever since Boots taught him to swim in their earned pool, there's the public waterworks. Hell, if he's really in a bad spot, he can just go sit in a random field until his iPod charge dies.

In the winter, he can't escape. He's trapped by his father's schedule. Christmas has a thousand components, and they will be done correctly. Bruno almost understands it. He gets his sense of tradition from his father, if nothing else. 

What he doesn't appreciate is the complete lack of accommodation for Mom. If she's in in-patient care he pulls her out. If she's in out-patient treatment her therapy gets skipped for seasonal events. Her sleep schedule gets regulated so they can have fresh-canned maple syrup breakfasts and hot cocoa midnight snacks, whether or not she's slept at all. She struggles with apathy, and she’s forced to care about every last card sent, carol sung, and light hung. By Boxing Day she's had at least one complete meltdown that Dad merrily ignores. Bruno gets to witness it all, and he can't do squat because only at Macdonald Hall does he have a voice. 

The only thing that makes vacation time bearable is knowing at the end of a very long, uncomfortable wait, he's coming home to Boots. That he’ll be able to be himself, and have friends who laugh and enjoy him. That he’ll only have to care about the things he chooses to, not because he’s told he has to, or because no one else does and it’s him or no one. And next year, at college, Bruno won’t even have that. Next year, there’s no 306 with Boots’ open arms waiting.

*

Bruno will go on vacations with Boots. Places that are sandy, mostly. Bruno will never consult a travel agent, or even the internet. Instead, he’ll just ask Diane where they should go. As a professional Vlogger, she’ll always have a recommendation for a place that they should see more of, some city in some country they’ve never heard of.

Boots will make a fuss of packing, but they’ll end up with the same things in their suitcases every time. It’ll be half board shorts and half suits. Linen, mostly, to fit with the climate. Never a tie. Until the day Bruno dies, fuck Mr. Wizzle and his stupid neckties.

They’ll do touristy things, like swimming with dolphins and learning new dances and going to handicraft markets. At night, they’ll argue about whether to leave the air conditioning in the hotel room on, to stay comfortable, or to turn it off, to experience the real climate of their chosen spot. Boots will push hard for North American-style comfort, but Bruno will always win with his trump card of being willing to sleep on the porch furniture. Boots will back down to insisting on a breeze, which Bruno will agree to. An open window will bring in the smells of the beach or island or ocean, wherever they’ve landed this time, why not agree?

Bruno will come home with pictures, local art, maybe an object or two. He’ll find a unique place to put his vacation knickknacks, somewhere he can see them whenever he wants. Things that have good memories attached should be cherished.

*

Bruno has a pretty mixed relationship with Edward. Most of the time, he’s an ungrateful little shit. He has a very annoying habit of considering those who merely show up to a riot, sometimes only when coerced - cough Elmer Drimsdale cough - as brave and more important than those fine souls who actually start the riot. On occasion, though, Bruno falls into a deep paternal love. Edward's got the markings of a leader worthy of Macdonald Hall; a medium to large friend group, a willingness to bully others, and a loose sense of morality. He just needs a guiding hand. 

As Edward loads the Kool Aid into the sprinkler system, Bruno reflects that this might be a grand direction for his as of yet undecided college major. He wants to foster the next generation, and seeing as he's gay and can't have kids, outside of Macdonald Hall, some kind of mentorship career is the best he's gonna do.

*

Bruno will have kids with Boots. It won’t matter that he’s predisposed to a hundred nasty things, because their baby will come out just like their surrogate Lana, down to the orange tuft of hair. 

They’ll discuss the name Jessica. They both like the way it sounds. But between Who Framed Roger Rabbit and True Blood, there aren’t a lot of positive redheaded Jessica role models. They’ll settle on Jennifer, and because of the utter normalcy of the name, she’ll have a childhood full of prelabeled trinkets. 

But every daughter needs a nickname, of course. So Bruno will call her Juniper. He’ll call her Juniper when he’s first rocking her to sleep, half delirious from lack of sleep, but holding it together by the skin of his teeth, for her sake. He’ll call her Juniper when tucking her into her big girl bed, nightlights firmly ensconced in each outlet in the room, because his parents were always assholes about it, and he wants to be better. He’ll call her Juniper when he catches her sneaking in during the middle of the night her first week of freshman year. When she’s old enough he’ll get a vial of the essential oil and let her smell the piney scent of it. She’ll grin and say she smells like Christmas. Boots will have his own secret nickname for Jennifer. It’ll take Bruno almost a decade to hear it for the first time.

*

Not for the first time in Bruno’s life - not even for the twentieth - the entire hallway's worth of Dorm 3 boys have stuck their heads out of their doors to see what's going on. Boots is as red as a beet. Standard fare, but at this stage in the game it makes Bruno worry about how he’s going to handle attention when Bruno’s not there to save him.

“You knocked a hole in my door,” Perry states, arms crossed over his chest.

Bruno gestures to the floor, to where the fault of the matter lies. “Sorry about that, buddy. Boots dropped the t-shirt cannon, and I guess it was calibrated at a high setting.”

“You guess?”

“Sturgeon's going to be pissed.”

“Look at the hole in the door. Goes right through!”

Perry talks over the chatty onlookers. “I don't even know why I'm asking this, but why do you have a t-shirt cannon?”

“Graduation,” Bruno explains.

“There's no way the Fish signed off on that.”

“You think they're just gonna knock holes in everything?”

“What, like it's their prom theme? Idiot.”

“Hey, they could set up one of those banners for all the graduating students to run and rip through.”

At that comment Bruno acknowledges the peanut gallery. “If you or anyone you know wants to join the grad committee -”

“We already have a grad committee,” Perry replies.

“This is more of a grad coalition.”

Half the hallway blanches. It makes Bruno smile nostalgically.

“Get back to your bedroom and leave the rest of us alone,” Perry commands.

“But you could have a shining moment.” Bruno continues, unperturbed at how Boots now has his face in his hands. “We could set up an aerial jungle gym for you to swing through as -”

“Fucking _now_ Bruno!” Perry grits out.

If he tries to explain his vision, he’s going to get heckled. It’s the only negative of Macdonald Hall; sometimes his dorm mates don’t have as much vision as he does. Maybe he’ll ditch university altogether and go live in a commune and grow hemp or something. At least that way he’ll be surrounded by like-minded individuals.

*

The O’Waltons will develop community events within six months of moving into their neighbourhood. There will already be a Neighbourhood Watch, and seasonal picnics, and of course Bruno will make Boots buy binoculars and potato salad, respectively, but it’s not until Bruno gets ahold of a petition that their credibility will rise. Several parents will think the speed limit in residential areas should be lowered, but this won’t get any traction. Not until Bruno swoops in with the years of Macdonald Hall under his belt that will get him and the cause on the local news. That momentary fame will really get the ball rolling, and before he knows it, he and Boots will be first name basis with everyone on the block. 

Bruno will have neighbours that won’t hate him. He’ll have an entire bay’s worth of people who won’t expect to have the book slammed on them at any moment, and scapegoat him for it. He won’t have to get the next door neighbours off his back by doing odd favours for them, like getting their lines written for them. And instead of mowing lawns as repayment for getting caught in a capital-P Plan, Bruno will only mow his own.

No, better than the lack of ire, he and Boots will have neighbours that actually like them. He’ll chitchat with the neighbour to the left when he’s pruning the hedges, and he’ll trade emergency keys with the neighbour to the right. Alice from across the street will bake them pies. He will exchange favours without having to blackmail or peer pressure anyone. In November, Gemma will suggest a coalition of her own accord, and Bruno will make Boots buy him a celebratory cake.

*

It’s two days before the girls’ graduation, a week before Macdonald Hall’s, and despite all the lessons on stealth they’ve learned over the years, the grad coalition has just been caught sneaking through the orchard. Well, part of it has. The only other two members to cross the highway with him and Boots were Chris and Mark, and those jerks made it.

The strident command of Bruno’s last seven years of nightmares rings out. “Halt!” 

As Boots stops resignedly, Bruno does something he’s _never_ done upon being caught. He explodes into tears. The look Boots is giving him means he knows it’s not a gambit. The look of Scrimmage’s is confused suspicion. 

Bruno chokes out snottily, “This is the last time...!” before he bursts into more weeping. The last glimpse of a shotgun, the last halt, the last rush of sneaking away. He’s not ready. Jesus help him, he’s not ready, and he has no choice whatsoever.

To Bruno’s immense surprise, Scrimmage drops the shotgun, causing a flinch from Boots, and pulls him into a hug. “You’re okay, boy. Shhhh. You’ll find new adventures.”

And maybe he will, but he’ll never have this kind of terrifying yet kindhearted old woman in his life again.

*

Bruno will go long-distance driving with Boots and Cathy and Diane, on occasion, when their busy schedules line up and their other responsibilities can temporarily be ditched. Between the four of them, there are a few decent relatives worth visiting, and there’s always gathering footage for Diane. 

Diane will want to use a map, and Cathy will say no, she doesn’t need one. They’ll bicker about it, and inevitably they’ll get lost. They’ll stop at a gas station. Boots will crowdsource for directions, asking each person, aggregating opinions for the best route. Diane will ask her social media followers if they’ve ever been lost, and get dozens of comments, only half of them spam. Cathy will stay in the front seat, mostly pouting aggressively. For his part, Bruno will pick out snacks meant to get everyone’s blood sugar up and their stress levels down. 

They’ll arrive at Grandma Burton’s hours later than they said they would, but she’ll forgive them with the soft grace of an eighty-year-old used to plans going awry. She’ll only have one guest room, which she’ll give to Diane. She’ll tell Cathy she can share a bed with her little old granny, and tell Bruno he and Boots can sleep on the floor in the living room, that the carpet is softer than the trenches her late husband had to sleep in. It’ll be impossible to argue with a statement like that, even if Boots isn’t used to that sort of pauper treatment, his own grandparents having been the coddling type. 

But just after midnight, Cathy will sneak out into the living room, pillows squished under one arm, blanket dragging against the floor. She’ll lie down with them -Diane having already joined them- and they’ll fall asleep in a pile of limbs. They won’t wake up until almost noon, when Grandma Burton comes in with five cups of tea on a silver platter and informs them they’ll be watching BBC, as she doesn’t hold with CNN. And even though the TV will be blaring to compensate with the hearing of a eighty three year old, it’ll be peaceful.

*

Bruno feels so sick he thinks he might die. This is the maximum level of the dread he’s been feeling all year. He doesn’t have months or weeks or days left. He doesn’t even have hours. Half the doors in Dorm 3 are open, occupants gone. The other half are full of teenage boys doing last-minute packing. The family-welcome end of the year breakfast is over, and both the O’Neals and the Waltons are waiting. Bruno can’t envision walking to the car. He doesn’t even want to breathe.

“Can we just -” Boots hands are fisted into balls, like he does when he gets super stressed, and Bruno wants to kiss his whitening knuckles, but he thinks they’d both cry at the gesture. “Can we, one las-”

“If you say one last time, Boots, I’m going to blow my fucking brains out.”

Boots is the one to take the first step towards him, but Bruno is the first to press his lips to his boyfriend’s. His boyfriend of he doesn’t even know how many years, because who can really say when they crossed the line from best friends living together, comrades in the war for protecting the sanctity of Macdonald Hall, to boys in love? He just knows it started with holding hands. They were so young that nothing else registered as a possibility. It started that way, and Bruno needs it to end with Boots’ hands on him too.

The lube is packed away like everything else that’s brought Bruno joy in the last seven years, but Boots has always been more methodical than him. He maybe could have survived a Wizzle regime. Unlike Bruno, who tossed all his shit in his suitcase in under ten minutes, knowing it’ll take hours to fold and put away once he’s at his parents’ house, Boots knows exactly what zippered compartment to check. He tosses it to the bed - not Boots’ bed anymore, just _a_ bed - and they work together on the next step. They kiss every moment of the way to getting naked, only pausing for a brief second to get shirts off.

“I need you to fuck me.” Bruno can’t think of anything else right now.

Boots uses his beautiful ‘I play five sports’ muscles to hoist him up. In a minute flat, Bruno is sandwiched between Boots and the wall, riding his dick like a pro. It’s rougher than they normally do, definitely less prep. All that means is that Bruno is going to feel it, when he’s sitting in the back seat being driven away from his home. Good.

With the rhythm that’s set, it’s hard to keep his mouth on Boots. Bruno continues to try. Feeding his groans into Boots' skin instead of into the air is the only thing that stops the people on either side of their room from complaining. It’s an effort that proves futile when someone pounds on their closed door.

“My parents are here, assholes!” Perry shouts through the dark wood. Bruno has to laugh. It figures one of his final ‘lasts’ is the last time he pisses off Perry, whose constant rage has been a staple of Macdonald Hall life.

*

Bruno will be pleased with himself, the day he writes a Facebook post saying married sex is better. He’ll have comments complaining he's not on his honeymoon anymore, when that kind of TMI is acceptable. Bruno will just shrug and reply with a winky emoticon. It's not his fault sex gets better with time. It'll be even hotter a year from now, probably. For one thing, you get to know exactly how to press their buttons. For another, sometimes in the course of fearing getting bored and complacent, you try stuff to spice it up and find a new favourite. Turns out he'll be really into kinks like blindfolds. There’s something sexy in knowing your lover by touch, not by look. 

Other toys can help too. By far the greatest sex aid Bruno will have is a ball gag, and by sex aid he means will not have sex if one isn’t available. It’ll be the only way he has of quieting himself while Jennifer is sleeping down the hall. The need for quiet will never change, just the reasoning.

Bruno will take the ball gag out after he and his husband come, that morning that he offends half his followers. He’ll little-spoon with Boots for almost a half hour before they’ll get up and get housecoats on, then walk the length of their foreign-art-covered hallway to the kitchen, where they’ll start making breakfast for their daughter. And in that moment between accidentally catching his sleeve on fire on the hot element and dropping a knife blade’s worth of butter in the pan, Bruno will thank the universe for letting him grow old and have all this time with the one he loves.


End file.
